Buy Hold Sell: 5 ASX high-flyers with fuel in the tank

This episode was filmed Wednesday 22nd April, 2026.

Human nature pulls us toward the bargain, the beaten-up, the overlooked. Who doesn't love a sale? Buying a stock that's already doubled feels wrong. Dangerous, even. But some of the best money made has come from backing winners that just kept winning.

The first half of 2026 has been a wild ride. The broader market has been middling at best. But beneath the surface, a handful of small and mid-cap stocks have defied the macro gloom entirely - Codan and Cuscal are just two names that have more than doubled in the past year, leaving investors on the sidelines wondering whether they've missed the boat altogether. 

So have they? Or is the rally just beginning?

To help make sense of the top performers of the year so far, Anna Dadic is joined by two fund managers who know this space better than most. Lucas Goode from IML and Ben Rundle from Hayborough Investment Partners. Between them, they run the ruler over five of the ASX's biggest high flyers of the year so far and we ask the question every investor is thinking: is there still fuel in the tank to keep flying?

Let's find out!

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Edited transcript

Anna Dadic: Hello and welcome to Livewire Buy Hold Sell. I'm Anna Dadic. The first half of 2026 has been a wild ride for the ASX, but while much of the market has been middling, there's been a handful of small and mid-cap stocks that have been anything but. These high flyers have taken off and defied the macro gloom. So have investors missed the boat, or is the rally just beginning?

Today we're looking at some of the top performers of the year and discussing whether they've still got fuel to keep going ahead. To help us navigate the numbers, I'm joined by Lucas Goode of IML and Ben Rundle of Habrok Investment Partners. Gents, welcome.

Anna Dadic: Ben, one of the hardest things for any investor is to buy into a stock that's already had a massive run. So how do you get comfortable leaning into a winner rather than assuming that it's too late?

Ben Rundle: Yeah, look, I think it probably comes down to whether you believe that investing is more art than science. So obviously the most sane logic would be buy low, sell high. But in reality, I think I've made more money buying companies that are at their all-time highs rather than their all-time lows. And I think that's a function of the fact that there just aren't that many great companies out there. Great companies can go on to compound their earnings and continue with share price growth for a lot of years, and they're few and far between.

So when you do find them, I often think that paying up for them is the right thing to do. I guess the flip side of that is when you realise they're not quite as high quality as you probably originally thought, and that's when you lose money.

Anna Dadic: Lucas, if you've already missed a stock that's doubled, what does it take for you to change your mind and finally buy in?

Lucas Goode: Yeah, look, it does go against human nature a little bit in admitting that we're wrong. And essentially, if you haven't owned a stock that's doubled, I guess you're wrong not to own it. I think sometimes you almost have to trick yourself and just look at it with fresh eyes. Forget about the fact that you've missed the first X percent and just look at how the business looks today.

I think Ben mentioned it in his answer that maybe sometimes you make more money buying higher and selling higher than trying to bottom feed. So look, I think you've got to take every investment on its merits. You've got to keep looking at things that you might have passed on in the past because, as Ben says, there are only so many high-quality companies out there. And companies are like organisms—they're constantly changing.

Sometimes you do need to kick over some rocks that you've kicked over before and see if you have missed a gem.

Codan (ASX: CDA) 

We're going to look at the high performers now, and we're going to start with Codan. It seems their metal detection business is really striking gold, with huge sales growth in African regions. I'm going to start with Lucas. Is it a buy, hold, or sell?

Lucas Goode: (HOLD) It's a hold for us on valuation grounds. I think Codan's a fantastic business. You can't really find any knocks on them, right? You can't find probably too many hotter exposures right now than drones and gold mining. Alf is a fantastic CEO and has done a really great job in terms of execution. For us, 40 times earnings is just a little bit rich for a business that doesn't have much in the way of recurring revenue.

Anna Dadic: Ben, the stock has jumped 146% in a year. What's your take?

Ben Rundle: (HOLD) I'll go to a hold as well. Hard to argue with anything that Lucas just said. They've got fantastic thematic tailwinds behind their whole business at the moment. Zetron in the US—there's a bit of a delay there. I don't think that's a huge issue. But just given the valuation, I mean, look, probably sit somewhere between a buy and a hold, but I'll say a hold because it is pretty richly priced.

SRG Global (ASX: SRG) 

Anna Dadic: Okay. Moving on to SRG Global. They've evolved into a huge engineering and construction services company and have recently been promoted to the ASX 200. Ben, is it a buy, hold, or sell?

Ben Rundle: (BUY) I think it's still a buy. Notwithstanding the fact that it has contract risk, the number of contracts that these guys have won over the last 18 months has been seriously impressive. I think that's probably a function of the team they've got, the sectors they face, and the offering that they can provide. But given their pipeline and work in hand, I think that can continue.

A lot of the work now is becoming more of a maintenance, recurring-type nature of earnings too. So look, I think it's still a buy here.

Anna Dadic: Lucas, earnings grew 44.7% in the last year. Are the margins strong enough for you? Buy, hold, or sell?

Lucas Goode: (HOLD) Oh, I think there's no doubt in the quality of the business. Look, it's a hold for us, probably with a view to buying on a pullback. Just on valuation growth—look, similar to Codan, it's one that we've owned in the past, made a lot of money out of, and just sold way too early, which I'll still kick myself for.

We've got a really high regard for management. The capital allocation has been phenomenal. The quality of the business has improved out of sight over the last few years. But 20 times just feels pretty full for a contractor in our book, so we're sitting on the sidelines.

Vysarn (ASX: VYS) 

Anna Dadic: Next we have Vysarn, a water services company. Share price has gone up over 30% recently after a massive upgrade to earnings guidance. Lucas, is it a buy, hold, or sell for you?

Lucas Goode: (HOLD) Look, I'm getting a bit sore sitting on the fence, but it's another hold for me. Look, it probably plays into a little bit what you asked earlier around buying a stock that's doubled. I really like the dewatering—the mine dewatering business—that Vysarn's got. I think the asset management play they've got is super interesting and truly innovative.

Not so sure about the consulting. I don't love people businesses. The question for me is only around valuation, but certainly it's one that's on the radar and we're looking at.

Anna Dadic: Ben, does the valuation work for you?

Ben Rundle: (BUY) Yeah, I think on the pullback you can buy it here. I think on the core business it's probably a hold, but where you can make a case for buying the stock at the moment is what started out as a bit of a pipe dream—their proposal to develop, own, and operate a bulk water supply asset in the Pilbara.

And I think I'm starting to become more and more of a believer that that'll happen. So I think that's how you can make a buy case of it, and I think that they will have success with it. So buy some.

IMDEX (ASX: IMD) 

Anna Dadic: Moving on to Imdex. They've been a standout in the mining tech space, and despite some volatility in the broader sector, they had a record first half of 2026. Ben, is it a buy, hold, or sell for you?

Ben Rundle: (HOLD) I'll say hold on Imdex. Had a good run. Valuation's starting to look a little bit full. Since they acquired the Devico business, the capital base has expanded quite a bit, and I think that they should probably be earning a little bit more from that capital base than what they are. They're still doing a good job, but I'll call it a hold.

Anna Dadic: Lucas, a 46% rise in the share price in the last year. Do you see more upside here as a buy, hold, or sell?

Lucas Goode: (BUY) Look, I do. It's a buy for us. I mean, the valuation's not cheap, but Imdex is one of the highest-quality names in our portfolio. It's really been quite an amazing transformation over the last decade—from a commodity fluid supplier into a global leader in mining technology with a really interesting and market-leading suite of products.

Clearly they've benefited a lot from the tailwinds of the boom in exploration. But to us, the main story going forward is the expanding wallet share of exploration budgets that they're achieving by selling more products and services, including software tools, into the existing client base.

So yeah, even though it is trading at the top of its historical valuation range, we think there is further to go, especially given it looks like we're still only in the early innings of this exploration boom.

Cuscal (ASX: CCL) 

Anna Dadic: Final top performer for this episode is Cuscal. Profit after tax was up by 76% in their last results, and just this month they announced a major acquisition of New Zealand's Paymark. Sticking with you, Lucas, is it a buy, hold, or sell?

Lucas Goode: (BUY) It's a buy for us. We've owned this since IPO. It's been a really good performer. We still think they're still pretty reasonably valued, given it's essentially a digital infrastructure stock that, after the acquisition of Indue last year, is pretty much a monopoly supplier of connection to the Australian payments rails for everyone except the big four banks.

So really just leverage to growing digital payments volumes, which we see over time, and still a really undemanding valuation. If we were to include the Indue synergies—which admittedly would take a few years to fully achieve—it's still only trading on around 10 times earnings, which given the growth and defensive nature of the business, we think is really attractive.

Anna Dadic: Ben, share price up over 90% in the last 12 months. Is it a buy, hold, or sell for you?

Ben Rundle: (BUY) I agree. I think it's a buy. The stock has popped in the last week or so on the back of the Paymark acquisition. They did a similar acquisition to that about 10 years ago and it went fantastically well for them, so I think that this one can probably exhibit the same sort of characteristics.

Also, within the last 12 months, as Lucas pointed out, their Indue acquisition I think is a fantastic use of capital and really strengthens the business. So we have owned it since IPO and we've increased our position over that time, just as our conviction level in the company has grown. I think it's really high quality, and I think you can pay up for it.

Anna Dadic: Ending with a double buy, and that's it for our look at the high flyers. Big thanks to Lucas and Ben. And if you enjoyed that episode, give it a like, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and make sure to check out our Instagram page and livewiremarkets.com.